


Wolf of the Evening

by somepallings



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke, Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna Clarke
Genre: And elsewhere, F/M, Once a messenger always a messenger, Travels in Faerie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28511718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somepallings/pseuds/somepallings
Summary: Drawlight lives upon his wits and his debts.
Relationships: Stephen Black/Mrs Brandy
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12
Collections: JSAMN New Year's fanfiction exchange





	Wolf of the Evening

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Adsecula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adsecula/gifts).



There were voices on the sulphurous air, saying strange things.

_Your father was a hyena and your mother a lioness!_

“No- my father was a gentleman, my mother… well my mother died when I was very young, and I do not feel that bringing her up at this late stage is in any way relevant or kind-“

_Leucrocuta, Wolf of the Evening!_

Christopher Drawlight shook his head, or at least he thought he did, insofar as he could determine that he had a head to shake.

“I am not those things you say. I am a man, I have as many teeth as most men, more than most, and I take good care of them!”

He located his hands, feeling foolish for having forgotten that they were at the ends of his arms, and waved them around his face (relieved to find that it _was_ a face and not a hideous long snout) as if shooing away flies. The voices retreated but did not subside. They were buzzing just outside his range of hearing.

He was walking, he realised, along a road of packed earth in a hot country. The fields on either side were parched and yellow, and a strange long grass grew in them. Drawlight could not draw any conclusions as to where he might be. The countryside had always been as much a mystery to him as the surface of the moon.

He could not quite remember how he had come to be here, but he felt that if he just thought a little harder, and if those wretched voices would leave him alone on the subject of his ill-fated mother and rake of a father, then he would very soon remember exactly where he was, where he was going, and what business he was about.

The air smelled very bad, like the filthy streets of St Giles. He wondered if he were on the continent. He could recall a sea-voyage, one of not very many he had undertaken in his life, and of being in water, and a hot sun shining. Although it was very hot here, he could not make out from which direction the sun was shining. It seemed to shine from all sides, but the light was not good and bright, the kind of light to bring out the colours in one’s outfit, the shine of one’s shoes and the glint of one’s pocket watch, but a sickly, painful light. The kind of light, in fact, that would show up the rubbed patch on the back of one’s second-best breeches, the crack in the left-hand-side glass of a lorgnette, or the cat-hair on one’s jacket, picked up from an armchair of a house one was no longer welcome to visit.

Drawlight shuddered to be illuminated by such a light.

He continued like this, thinking and walking, occasionally looking down at his feet as they took one step and then another, amazed to see that they were small, neat human feet in a pair of black leather shoes, and not cloven hooves at all!

The air was beginning to smell fresher. There was a breeze blowing from up ahead now and again, and it beckoned him forward, irresistible as the sound of gossiping voices in an intimate corner at a party, or the taste of someone else’s fine wine in a crystal glass.

A gate appeared in front of him, seemingly from nowhere, since he couldn’t remember seeing its approach. It was a wide farm-gate spanning the road entirely, painted white. Drawlight could think of nothing to do but to lift the latch and go through it, and so he did.

As soon as he was on the other side of the gate, his spirits rose. The freshness of the air seemed to blow cobwebs out of his mind, and the sun finally shone in a way that was comprehensible to his senses.

He was still lost, but those nasty, pinching little voices had not followed him past the gate, and, upon thrusting a hand into his pocket to check, his lorgnette wasn’t cracked at all.

In this more cheerful state of mind, he continued along the road. Presently, he heard the jingling of tack and the clack of horses’ hooves upon the road, and he turned to see a mail coach coming up behind him. Thinking this a great stroke of good fortune, he waved his hand at the driver, indicating that he would like to board, and the driver twitched his reins and drew to a stop next to Drawlight.

“Ah, coachman, I am bound for a little place in Yorkshire called Starecross,” said Drawlight, although until he had opened his mouth and heard it in his own voice, he had had no idea that he had been about to say it, “Can you tell me if we are anywhere near that place?”

The coachman looked at Drawlight with a look that plainly showed his astonishment at seeing this dapper-looking little man in his shiny shoes and well-tailored suit out on the road, asking to go to Yorkshire of all places. He spoke in some rustic accent Drawlight couldn’t place (and could barely understand).

“I don’t know the place myself, sir, but it cannot be fewer than 50 miles. This is Derbyshire.”

Derbyshire! It was true that Drawlight hadn’t had the first clue where he was, or why, but Derbyshire was certainly a surprise. The coach driver, growing impatient with this blinking, gaping gentleman, advised Drawlight that he could at least take him on to the next town, and named the price for this service.

It was at this moment that Drawlight, patting his pockets, had to admit that he was without coin of any kind, and the coachman, muttering darkly about gentleman lunatics wasting people’s time, ordered the horses on, and Drawlight could only look on as the mail coach left him behind, its few inhabitants gazing disinterestedly at him as they passed.

He was not inclined to be indignant. Even if he had been, he saw that there was another coach coming up the road. This coach was not a mail coach, or at least it didn’t resemble any mail coach that Drawlight had ever seen. It was shining white, drawn by two matching milk-white horses, and the jingle of their tack sounded like nothing so much as a host of tiny silver bells.

This coach drew up alongside him without his even having to hail it. The coach driver was a strange little fellow, with a small body, very long limbs, and the largest eyes Drawlight had ever seen on a person.

He looked down at Drawlight, no surprise showing on his face at all and said, in a queer voice like the sounding of a flute:

“Hop in Leucrocuta. I will take you where you need to go.”

Though he bristled at the designation, he obeyed.

The other passengers in the coach were decidedly strange. One of them was a cat.

He tucked himself into a corner of the coach, beside a lady in a very unusual hat.

The cat was sitting opposite him. He shuffled his knees uncomfortably, avoiding its gaze. He turned to the lady next to him, putting on his most ingratiating smile and enquired whether she travelled this road often.

“Oh!” said the hat, “Not so very often. I prefer not to be away from home, but it cannot be avoided. I find that I am always addressed by the the most undesirable types in these public coaches”.

It let out a deep sigh, and the lady whose head it rested upon turned her gaze to the window.

Drawlight undertook no further conversation, but folded his hands neatly upon his knees and endeavoured to look bored and quite at ease. After a few minutes (or maybe a few hours, he could not entirely be sure), he began to feel that the cat opposite him, a little grey dainty thing wearing a collar with a small piece of blue and white Murano glass (by this Drawlight had come to the conclusion that she must be a _lady_ cat), would think him rude for not acknowledging her, and though he had no real desire to be social to a _cat_ , once again he smiled obsequiously, opening his eyes very wide (as he had some idea that this might be considered politeness among cats), bent his face down close to the cat’s face, and said loudly and clearly;

“How do you do, Madam Cat?”

The cat, sitting in dignified fashion upon the seat cushion, wrinkled her nose and narrowed her eyes. Drawlight did not find this encouraging, but he kept smiling and nodding at the cat, encouraging her into sociability.

For his pains, he was treated to a delicate feline sneeze, which caused him to leap back into his seat and press his handkerchief to his mouth. _Well._ He had behaved with perfect condescension, he had done everything in his power to ingratiate himself with these people, and he could do no more. He cast a haughty and caustic eye back to the offending cat and was surprised to see that she was casting an amused and sarcastic eye back at him. Her green eyes flashed and she spoke, revealing a pronounced Welsh accent:

“I am visiting my family in the Brecon Beacons. I have travelled far by means that have only recently become available to my use.”

She licked one paw delicately and smoothed back the fur above her eye.

“And you, sir, I can see still have far to go before you rest.”

It dawned on Drawlight that he had not told the driver his destination, nor did he know how long they had been travelling for, or where they might be. He poked his head out of the carriage window, and was on the point of saying something to the driver to this effect, when he saw that they were passing a very lonely-looking tower set in a thicket of woods, with dreary, awful windows that looked like open eyes, and the merest hint of a figure standing gazing out. There was a brook running past, and oh! Drawlight gasped, the thorny trees and bushes all around were draped and covered in corpses and skeletons. This wasn’t the worst, though, for as they passed this tower, Drawlight locked eyes with a gaunt, hollow-eyed man who stood guard at the entrance to the lane leading up to the tower. He was tall and had been handsome once, and he wore the rags of what had clearly once been very fine and fashionable clothing. He held Drawlight’s gaze for the entire time that he was in sight, and the baleful intensity of it made him shiver.

He pulled his head back inside the carriage and didn’t dare look out again until the driver shouted an abrupt command to the horses and the carriage jolted to a stop.

“Starecross School, Starecross House, Starecross Village, sir!” the man said in his fluting voice, turning in his seat and grinning at Drawlight, displaying an alarming set of teeth.

Drawlight opened the door of the carriage and alighted smartly, waving a polite goodbye to the cat, who flicked her ears at him and winked one eye. The door snapped shut and the carriage was off, jingling and twinkling away back across the packhorse bridge over the stream. Soon it faded from view, and Drawlight had to blink once or twice to clear its bright shining after-image from his eyes.

So, it would seem he had reached his preordained destination. He saw nothing for it but to walk up to the big wooden front door and knock.

A footman opened the door a crack, looked him up and down, and then opened the door the rest of the way.

“Can I help you sir?” he asked, inclining his head deferentially.

Drawlight hesitated. Unlike before, he had no ready answer to the question. He improvised.

“I- ah, yes, my good man, please escort me to the master of the house. I must see him upon a most urgent matter.”

This seemed to do the trick. He was ushered in to the building, and was faintly surprised to see that it was full of school boys. A giggling pair ran past him, bashing into his arm and almost sending him spinning. They looked back, not stopping, both yelling “Sorry sir!” in an unrepentant fashion.

He brushed off his sleeve, in half a mind to demand that the young miscreants be apprehended and made to apologise sincerely, but the servant was holding a door open and beckoning him inside. The door bore a neat sign that said in black painted letters:  
  
J SEGUNDUS

HEADMASTER

He felt on some dim level that he recognised that name. At the footman’s direction he entered and sat down. The servant let him know that the headmaster would be with him soon.

Drawlight had many times been brought into the presence of someone important while not knowing what he was going to say, or how best to plead his case. He had lived his whole life on his wits, and while they did feel somewhat depleted at the moment, he felt equal to the task in front of him, whatsoever it might be.

He tapped his foot and looked about the room. A study, with a desk and chair, a plain but serviceable carpet, and one little lead-paned window overlooking a tree in which some small songbirds were twittering.

The chair he sat in was opposite the desk, and rather more comfortable than the one behind it in which the headmaster presumably sat while meting out scoldings, admonishments and thinly-veiled references to one’s undeserved station in life. It had always been so in Drawlight’s experience with schoolmasters, at least.

The door opened at last and in came a man whom Drawlight assumed at first to be another servant, and so took no notice of until the man sat down in the chair behind the desk and fixed a brilliant smile upon him.

As Drawlight looked up to meet his gaze, this smile faltered and became a rictus of horror, before a strangled shout emerged from his throat, and he slapped one hand over his mouth as if to stifle a further outburst.

Within moments, the door burst open once again and a familiarly dark and disreputable-looking fellow burst in. He too was brought up short when he laid eyes on him, and made haste to the headmaster’s side, all the while never taking his eyes off Drawlight.

“Oh, it is you!” Drawlight said, his ingratiating smile once more acting as his primary weapon, “Childermass, was it not? Norrell’s man. I am very glad to see a familiar face! It seems I am here to see the headmaster, Mr – erm, Segundus, was it not? Fetch us a cup of tea, would you?” He waved his right hand in a gesture of cordial dismissal.

Childermass’s countenance did not change, save the raising of one eyebrow, and he glanced down at Segundus, whose hand was still covering his mouth, but whose expression was fast losing its horror and gaining a look of fascinated interest. He dropped his hand and finally spoke, addressing not Drawlight, but, with intolerable rudeness, the servant Childermass.

“Is it really him, do you think, John? Or merely some kind of apparition or fairy glamour? He came to the door and Charles saw him in, quite as if he were an ordinary visitor!”

Childermass had once again affixed Drawlight with his dark piercing gaze, and he replied in an insolent way.

“The cards told me he was dead. I have always believed that it was Henry Lascelles that dispatched him. If it is not him, it looks remarkably like. He seems to know me, and to remember Norrell, at any rate.”

Drawlight was suddenly alarmed. The name ‘Lascelles’ struck him for some reason as very disagreeable, and one he did not wish to think about further. As he had no desire to appear at a disadvantage in front of this mousey gentleman and undeferential servant, he did not let on, but simpered and leaned forward a little, trying to create a confidential atmosphere and said to Segundus;

“Now, Mr Segundus, I have travelled very far, from a strange land, at the behest of… at the behest of someone very important, I am sure, in order to be here today. Pray, tell me what need you have of me, and I shall do my utmost to carry out any little duty you should wish, if only those voices leave off talking to me about my mother, and as long as I am allowed to keep my natural shape.”

Segundus and Childermass both seemed rather taken aback by this speech, and no one said anything for some seconds.

“Your natural shape!” said Segundus, at length, “Oh, I see what you mean, oh, John, look at him one way, he is a man, but look at him another and-“

“Yes”, replied Childermass, “From another angle, he is not a man at all.”

Drawlight did not like to hear this. He folded his hands in his lap and said only: “No. I am a man. I have as many teeth as you.”

He was beginning to believe what they said was true. That he was dead. He seemed to remember dying. He did not wish to believe it and began looking about the room for something to distract him, to take his mind off these unpleasant thoughts. It was at that very moment that a door opened.

Not the door he had entered by. Another door, a narrow little door next to the window, had creaked open and was letting in a watery blue-green light.

“Oh! Stranger still!” cried Segundus, “There has never been a door there before!”

Through the door stepped a figure dressed in a raiment of green velvet with a silver diadem at his brow.

“Sir Walter Pole’s butler!” cried Drawlight, recognising him at once and turning back to the headmaster. “Between you and me, Mr Segundus, your school is very full of other people’s servants!”

There was the scrape of a chair as Segundus hurriedly stood, saying as he did so, “Stephen- Mr Black, um, or, your majesty? Sir, it is wonderful to see you after so long, will you stay for tea?” He was fumbling at his coat pocket as he said this, out of which the top of a pencil and a memorandum book were visible.

The butler – Stephen Black – merely nodded to Segundus and Childermass, and then looked at Drawlight with some surprise. This irritated him somewhat – was no one expecting him? Would no one be pleased to see him, when he had come all this way?

“Thank you, gentlemen, for taking good care of my messenger,” said Stephen, in a voice that had bells in it, or birdsong, or possibly the sound of rain falling on a roof high above. “I have summoned him out of wherever he has been, for I have need of him.”  
  


Childermass let out a snort of laughter at this. “If you have need of him, sir, you are the first who ever has.”

Drawlight narrowed his eyes at Childermass. He wished in that moment that he was a cat, so that he could sneeze in his face and thus express his feelings.

“Come,” said a voice behind him and in this voice there was command and the tolling of a great bell, and Drawlight was powerless to resist it. He got to his feet and stepped towards the door, following the ethereal butler through it and closing it behind him. As he pulled it closed, he heard Segundus speak in a slightly peevish voice. “It is all very well to be the keeper of a fairy lord’s waiting room, but need he leave us without even five minutes of conversation? I’m sure it would furnish me with enough for half a hundred articles!”

Childermass’s affectionate laughter echoed behind him as Drawlight once more walked on, not knowing where he was going, only knowing once again that he must.

The court of the fairy lord once known as Stephen Black was not at all what Drawlight would have expected, if indeed he had ever ventured to expect anything at all. He may have hazarded to guess that it would be showy and flashy, like the city home of a young minor royal, or bestial and depraved like the court of Heliogabalus.

As they emerged from the woods (somehow that strange little door had led them through a damp, dark green wood, rich with chirping birds and strange calls in the distance), Drawlight in fact so before him a neat, attractive-looking house, made of a bright red stone with polished black wooden windowsills, finials and doors. He followed the lead of Stephen Black down an elegantly-curved pathway lined with trees and plants that Drawlight could not name, and all around him the air was scented with the rich perfume of spices, such as much be smelled in the better kind of provisioners’ or grocers’ shop. Under it all, however, there was a hint of decay, and Drawlight had the feeling that if he looked more closely there might be old bones poking up from under the greenery, and strange creeping things hiding in the branches of the trees.

They entered the house through a grand portico of that shining black hardwood, hung with beautifully woven cloth covered in bold patterns and intricate designs, and Drawlight realised that, far from what he had taken to be a suit of fine green velvet, Stephen was in fact wearing a stately robe of similar woven cloth. He wondered how he could have made such a mistake. As they passed through this doorway, a servant rang a large bell and announced in a voice louder that seemed possible that the master of the house had returned.

The house itself was large, but not overly so; it was beautifully appointed, but not opulent. There was an elegant touch in every place one would expect to find it, every surface gleamed and there was an overall feeling of harmony and order that Drawlight could not help but admire.

They passed through a hallway with a great sweeping staircase, seeming to stretch on and up like the foothills of a strange country, with the sun of another world shining through the window at the top. They passed a number of small cosy rooms, visible through their open doors, one of which appeared to look out over a neat square park, the type one might find in the middle of a fashionable London square, all over with peacocks. Finally they came to another very grand door made of interwoven woods, one pale and one dark, that described a graceful arch under which Stephen Black and Drawlight passed into a grand hall, a ballroom, a throne room, all of these things and more, with a rush floor like a medieval feasting hall and enormous windows through which shone bright white light.

The room was populated with a multitude of strange people, wearing outfits scarce to be described, with great masses of hair, no hair at all, with birds perched upon their shoulders or animals on golden chains lolling at their feet.

At the end of the room, just where one would expect to find a great throne, there stood a sturdy little desk of the same dark wood seen elsewhere in the house, and a comfortably upholstered but serviceable-looking chair. Flanking the chair were two statues, a lion sitting up in stately fashion and a lioness lolling comfortably on her side, both made of sandy-coloured stone. As they approached, and Stephen made to take is seat at the desk, the lioness growled and curled her tail affectionately around his leg, stretching out a paw lazily.

Drawlight yelped and took a step backwards. Some members of the assembled throng tittered, but Stephen favoured him with a kindly smile.

“Thank you for heeding my summons, Christopher Drawlight. I did not expect you – that is to say, I did not name you specifically, only that I wished for a messenger suitable for my task. I admit I have no great love for you or your former acquaintances, but at this late remove, if you can help me with my difficulty then we may part as friends.”

Drawlight was not used to being spoken to so by butlers, but he had always prided himself on his ability to bond with the servant class, and so he smiled as if helping this man through his difficulties was the thing he wanted most in the world.

“Oh certainly! Please, lay out your little scheme, I’m sure it will be the drollest thing in the world.” he said, spreading his hands expansively.

Stephen Black was looking at him with an amused look on his handsome face. Drawlight had to own that he looked much better as a fairy lord than as a butler, he certainly had the face for it.

“Capital,” he replied, opening a little drawer in the front of his desk and taking out an ivory-coloured envelope edged in gold. There was a name written on the front in neat, economical writing. Drawlight took the envelope and read:

Mrs Brandy

“You must take this letter to a lady in London. She lives on St James Street, above a grocery shop that bears her name. You need not wait for her answer, the letter contains instructions that I greatly hope she will wish to follow. When you are done-“

But Stephen was not able to tell Drawlight what was to happen when he was done.

The door to the chamber had been flung open, and in strode a very remarkable person – a tall and imposing man with a glitteringly pale skin and a furious look in his eyes. He was finely dressed in an outfit that was nothing out of the common way in terms of style or tailoring, but was made of the richest of fabrics and trimmed with gold thread and mother-of-pearl.

He was trailed by an entourage of four fae-looking types: a footman in a tricorn hat, a person of indeterminate gender wearing a medieval-looking tabard and breeches, an elderly and beautiful lady wearing a lace-bedecked dress and a sullen and sooty-looking little boy of about ten years old with very pointed ears and teeth.

“Stephen!” he shouted, pushing his way through the assembled courtiers with little patience or consideration, knocking off wigs and dislodging birds, leaving a terrible screeching and flapping of wings in his wake. “Whatever do you mean by stealing my messenger?”

Drawlight, sensing a bit of entertainment was about to unfold itself, looked gleefully between the two, observing that Stephen Black had allowed himself but a moment’s confusion, and was now composedly smiling at this approaching interloper.

“Alessandro!” he said in a cordial voice, “Your messenger? I had no idea of stealing any thing or any one, you know that is quite out of my usual way.”

The man named Alessandro had reached the desk and now pointed at Drawlight in an accusatory manner that Drawlight did not like much at all.

“This man here! I summoned him to my cousin’s” (here he pointed to the sooty lad at his side) “lands on the border with Derbyshire on purpose to convey a marriage proposal for me, being as I am personally unwelcome in that county, and it will be necessary to visit in order for the delivery to be made! And here I find him in Lost Hope, on the edge of another county entirely, paying some social call to you!”

Stephen Black’s eyebrows shot up. “A marriage proposal you say? That is in fact the very reason I have summoned him here to Lost Hope, to convey a marriage proposal to a lady in London. It seems there has been some confusion. Perhaps our spells were alike enough, and performed at the same time, in order to summon only one messenger to do for us both?”

“Oh, I suppose because you and I are both English and yet not, and rulers of fairy lands, and had need of a messenger for our affairs of the heart – I really have no patience with this English magic. I wish that my father truly had been Italian, I am quite sure that Italian magic has no such room for error.”

“But of course, Mr Simonelli, if your father had truly been an Italian, you would not be heir to the lands you are, and you would not be in a position to lend such able help to your young cousin here in governing his own estate.”

Simonelli grumbled at this, but muttered that he must own it to be true.

“Please, Mr Simonelli, tell Drawlight here your request, and I am sure he will be able to carry it out as ably for you as he intends to do for me.” said Stephen, indicating that Simonelli address Drawlight directly.

“Oh! It is a perfectly wonderful plan Mr Black, how you will laugh and congratulate me to hear it. You remember I told you, when I first came into awareness of my father and his true nature, that in order to win his lands I had to outwit and rid myself of my rascal cousin, this fine boy’s scoundrel of a father, and in doing so I had to sadly deceive five young ladies, sisters, into believing I wished to marry all five of them?”

Drawlight was afraid that his grin would split his face. This was entertainment and gossip beyond any he was used to.

“Well, I have been thinking of those ladies over these last few years, and I have since learned that, since my banishment from their company, not a one of them have gone on to marry, and all five sisters are wasting away in spinster-hood at Upperstone House. Is that not a tragedy, Mr Black?”

“Ah, and I take it you have hit upon the notion to raise one of them from this sad state into the blessed state of becoming Mrs Simonelli?” replied Stephen, rather ironically Drawlight thought, though Mr Simonelli seemed not to notice it.

“Ah no, Mr Black, this is the genius of it – I shall keep my promise to all five! I have lands and wealth enough now to support five ladies in the state to which they have become accustomed, and thus all five of the Miss Gathercoles will become Mrs Simonellis!”

Drawlight could not help but let out a delighted whooping giggle at this, which Mr Simonelli seemed to find encouraging. He beamed back at Drawlight.

“You see, this man sees the glory of it! What objection can they possibly have? All five of them were willing to marry me when I was nothing a but village vicar with 50 pounds a year, only think how much more pleasing to them I will be as a wealthy man with property in England and Elsewhere!”

Stephen Black was gazing at Alessandro Simonelli with a sceptical look on his face.

“Oh, my friend, I fear you have spent too long in these lands and are forgetting English and Christian morals. I do not doubt that you mean well by these ladies, and would indeed make a fine husband for any one of them, but do not forget that these are English maidens, brought up in a church that has taught them that bigamy is a terrible sin, and that to share a husband may be something that they cannot be persuaded to do.”

Simonelli flapped his hand dismissively. “Oh, as to that, I have prepared most rational and persuasive arguments. Dando!”

At this, the tricorned servant revealed a fat sheaf of five envelopes, each at least an inch thick and with a different name extravagantly inked on the front.

“I plan to write a treatise on marriage, Mr Black. I will use my diaries as a foundation, and I will be able to instruct the young men of England in everything they will need to know about marriage and keeping a wife! Who will be able to instruct them better than I, who will have five very different women to practice upon?”

Stephen sighed. “I suppose it will come down to Mr Drawlight’s moral feelings on the matter.” He turned and said; “Well sir, what do you-?” but was stopped short by Drawlight’s absence.

Having lost interest in the matter, he had simply wandered away.

As Drawlight made his way back through the forest to the tiny door that would take him back to England, he became aware gradually that he was being followed. He turned abruptly to catch his unseen watcher and was confronted with Simonelli’s scruffy little cousin.

“You’re dead, aren’t you?” he said in that deep, gruff sort of voice that some children have, “And you are a messenger?”

Drawlight had to own that this was true on both fronts.

“When you go back… there… please, could you take a message?”

Drawlight tilted his head in a way that could mean yes, if the child was so inclined to take it that way.

“Can you tell my mother that… that I miss her? And I’m sorry. Tell her John Hollyshoes’s little boy is sorry.”

Having said his piece, the little half-fairy child then turned tail and ran pell-mell back down the path to the house.

Drawlight shook his head. How he was meant to find this woman he did not know. He didn’t like to think about going back… there.

He stuck his head back through the door into the poky little study at Starecross house, only to find the room in a state of uproar. The chairs were knocked over and the desk pushed against the wall. It rather looked as though a hurricane had swept through and there were muddy boot-prints on the carpet. Drawlight supposed this to be the effect of Mr Simonelli’s entourage.

He had to poke about the house for a good half hour before he found the headmaster and his man of business (he supposed Childermass was working for this school now, although what had happened to his last master Drawlight couldn’t quite put his finger on at the moment) taking a fortifying cup of tea in the kitchen. It was now dark outside, and the boys retired to their dormitory.

“Oh, it is you again.” said Childermass when Drawlight made his entrance into the room.

Segundus looked up sourly. “At least it is not that awful Simonelli fellow. I quite blame you for his intrusion into our school, Mr Drawlight, for he has never come this way before in visiting Mr Black. He was all indignance and high-handed arrogance, accusing us of abetting a theft.”

Drawlight bridled. “I am sure I have never met the fellow before today. If these fairy types could get their magic right in the first place then perhaps I need not have travelled from H- from who-knows-where to Derbyshire to Yorkshire and to Elsewhere and back all in one!”

Segundus’s countenance brightened and he reached again for his book and pencil.

“Oh my, you have travelled so far in one day! Please, you must tell me all about it. And what was your purpose in being summoned here, did you find it out?”

Drawlight brandished his letter. “Yes, yes, I must deliver this to a lady in London! If you can speed me on my way I shall tell you anything you wish to know. I have recently heard the most delicious story about a gentleman who proposes to marry five women, all of them sisters, and keep house with them all in Roman fashion!”

Unfortunately, Segundus was deprived of this diverting tale by the jingling sound of a carriage just outside the servants’ entrance. Drawlight broke off almost mid-sentence and started for the door, on the other side of which he encountered the same snow-white carriage that had brought him here, shining eerily in the dark, the horses snorting and stamping against the cold.

Ecstatically he jumped in, finding himself to be the only passenger.

“St James Street, London, driver! And don’t spare the horses!”

In St James Street he found Mrs Brandy’s shop, her lodgings above surely only a little bigger than his own old situation above a shoemaker in Little Ryder Street. Recollecting this caused him to stop still on her threshold, as memories of his past, both recent and ancient, threatened to flood past whatever barrier was currently holding them back.

He shook his head and knocked at the shop door, though it was late and closed at this hour.

He waited, and presently saw a light within, as Mrs Brandy came into the shop with a candle and peered out through the front window at him. He contrived to look as friendly and smart as he could, holding up the letter to indicate it was for her. She looked at it, reading her name on the front and then becoming animated and unlocking and opening the door with great haste.

“Oh sir, is it a letter from Stephen Black? It is, I can see it is his writing, I would know it anywhere, and I have been so worried, I had so hoped-“ she was setting down the candle, she was reaching for the letter, she almost tore it from Drawlight’s grasp. He laughed at her rather derisively, this plain-looking little woman. She seemed quite the kind of woman a butler might want to marry. At least that Simonelli fellow had some ambition in his marriage plans.

He took one last look at her as he left the shop. The ivory colour of the letter paper was reflecting the glow of her candle and lighting up her whole face with a beatific golden glow. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes bright and full, the beginnings of a rapturous smile forming on her lips, and Drawlight had to admit that in that moment she did look rather pretty.

The carriage had waited for him.

“Where to now sir?” asked the coachman.

“Oh, I do not know, Drawlight said, feeling a little deflated. “I suppose back to where you found me. If Mr Simonelli decides to go ahead with his scandalous marriage plans, I suppose he will fetch me back again quickly enough.”

Soon they were back at the white-painted gate from beyond which a sulphurous wind blew.

He left the coach and slapped the side of it to indicate that the driver could drive on.

He stood for a moment with his hands in his pockets, looking up the lane, deciding whether to press on.

“I suppose that I must. I have a message to deliver.”

He thought of the gaunt, bleak-eyed figure he had passed on the road to Starecross and shuddered.

“After all, at least _I_ am merely _dead_.”

He opened the gate.

**Author's Note:**

> The excellent prompts I was given were:
> 
> a) anything with Stephen Black!  
> b) something fairy-centered, perhaps a missing scene with the Gentleman in a less horrific mode  
> c) Drawlight in a bit of a sympathetic light: maybe showcasing his hollow weak character in the face of magic which he fears/admires, maybe mini redemption where he befriends the transformed cat lady, something semi-angsty or just dry humoured scene, etc.  
> d) perhaps something about Mr. Simonelli from Ladies of Grace Adieu.
> 
> Lovely prompts, thank you very much for them!


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